Policing the Plains | Page 8

Wolseley and with him
entered Fort Garry, which had just been evacuated by Riel. As things
quieted, Butler was going to leave for the East, when Governor
Archibald got hold of him, as stated, and sent him out over the West to
report on conditions and make recommendations. He left Fort Garry in
October, 1870, treked 900 miles to the Rocky Mountains, then wheeled
northward to Edmonton and down the Saskatchewan River to Lake
Winnipeg, boxing the compass so far as the great hinterland of the
plains was concerned. He heard much and saw more, witnessed the
smallpox scourge lashing the Indian tribes, saw the general disquiet and
disorder with no one in control. The steed of the far West was riderless,
the reins had been thrown away and the country was running wild.
Butler's report is graphic in the extreme and has many
recommendations, but the one that mainly concerns us just now is that
which advises the establishment of constituted authority with sufficient
force to back it up, for it was that recommendation which led to the
establishment, though delayed strangely for two years more, of the
famous corps known originally to history as the North-West Mounted
Police.
The particular wisdom of Butler's recommendation lies in the fact that
he advocated along with the civil government a material force which

would be located "not at fixed points or forts." For he said that any
force so located "would afford little protection outside the immediate
circle of these points and would hold out no inducements to the
establishment of new settlements." Wise man was Butler who saw that
settlers must be secured to pour into this vast country and make it the
granary of the Empire, and that a force movable enough to be readily at
the call of scattered settlements would be absolutely necessary. The
sequel has proven how well Butler forecasted events because settlers by
the thousand soon desired to come and it was the presence of the
Mounted Police that gave to these settlers the sense of security that
made it possible for them to turn the vast plains into waving fields of
grain and cause the wide areas of pasture land to shake under the tread
of domestic herds.
And the other special point in which Butler's wisdom in
recommendation comes out in regard to the force to be established is
where he states that such a force should be independent of any faction
or party either in church or state. His wise hint in this regard was taken
and followed, and hence all through their history the Mounted Police
have gone their way, caring for nothing and for nobody in their
intentness on doing their duty. It is quite well known to some of us that
in many places on the plains, in the mountains and away in the land of
the golden Yukon, the Police were often strongly urged to relax their
vigilance in the interests of some political party or some business that
was financially concerned. But all such temptations fell on deaf ears,
and the scarlet-coated riders, looking on intimidation and efforts at
bribery with contempt, pursued the even tenor of their way and gave
every man a square deal according to his deserts no matter who he was
or to what colour the sun and the wind had burned his skin. Such was
the force which this wise recommendation of Butler called into
existence.
That such a force would have no sinecure and would have no room for
"misfits or failures," Butler tells us in 1870 in that clause of his report
in which he says, "As matters at present rest, the region of the
Saskatchewan is without law, order or security for life or property;
robbery and murder for years have gone unpunished; Indian massacres

are unchecked even in the close vicinity of the Hudson's Bay Company
posts and all civil and legal institutions are entirely unknown." It was
high time for government control with an adequate material force to
give it power.
And because I have referred to Butler's foresightedness it would be
unfair to his memory to close this section without quoting the
magnificent paragraph with which he ended his report in March of
1871. It reads as follows:
"Such, sir, are the views which I have formed upon the whole question
of the existing state of affairs in the Saskatchewan country. They result
from the thought and experience of many long days of travel through a
large portion of the region to which they have reference. If I were asked
from what point of view I have looked upon this question, I would
answer--From that point which sees a vast country lying, as it were,
silently awaiting the approach of the immense wave of human life
which rolls